# What is the longest urban warfare battle? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 14, 2023, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033 "2023-05-14T15:37:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b487fb/32.png) [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walken_After_Midnight)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2023, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/1 "2023-05-14T15:37:05Z")
The Battle of Bakhmut, in which Russian invaders try to capture a town in eastern Ukraine, has been going on for the past 9 months, 1 week and 6 days. In comparison, the largest urban warfare battle ever, the Battle of Stalingrad in the Second World War, lasted 5 months, 1 week and 3 days. What is the longest duration urban warfare battle ever? ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2023, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/2 "2023-05-14T15:46:04Z")
Assuming traditional sieges (where the defenders hold the urban bits inside the walls and the attackers non-urban bits outside, and when if there is urban fighting it’s short and brutal) don’t count. Possibly the Battle Leningrad might? Ii lasted over two years and I think a lot of the fighting did happen in the surrounding suburbs: > **[Siege of Leningrad](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad)** > > Soviet victory > Northern Front:1,017,881 killed, captured or missing2,418,185 wounded and sickTotal: 3,436,066 casualties > 1942 ---
**Author:** ![Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b487fb/32.png) [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walken_After_Midnight)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2023, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/3 "2023-05-14T16:42:38Z")
The Siege of Leningrad seems to have been more of a siege/blockade, with the Germans aiming to starve and bombard the city into submission, rather than assaulting it directly in urban warfare. After a year’s besieging, Hitler appears to have ordered a final assault on the city, Operation Nordlicht (1942), but it was cancelled due to a Soviet counteroffensive. Ironically, Putin’s family was affected by the Siege of Leningrad firsthand. His father was seriously wounded during the battle to defend the city, his mother was a survivor of the siege, and his older brother, Viktor, died from diphtheria during the siege at just one year old. Putin himself, born seven years after the war ended, was brought up in the battle-scarred city. > [@](#): > > When the siege was lifted, only 700,000 Leningraders of the city’s prewar population of 3.5 million remained alive. > > One of these survivors was the woman who would become Vladimir Putin’s mother. > > Like thousands of other mothers, Maria Shelomova Putin had left her young son Viktor in a children’s shelter while she scavenged for food. Viktor died of diphtheria; Maria, weakened by lack of food, fainted near a pile of corpses and awakened just in time to avoid being dragged off to a mass grave. > > Towards the end, Maria was too weak to walk. But she and Leningrad’s other survivors grimly held on. Her husband, Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, was wounded badly at the front by a German grenade but survived. Seven years after the war ended the Putins had another son, Vladimir Vladimirovich. He grew up to be the president of Russia. > > A somber ceremony was held three years ago at the city’s Piskarevsky Cemetery, a memorial to those who died in the siege. From a distance of 75 years, the survivors of the Leningrad siege are seen as heroes. People came to lay flowers and slices of bread on the rows of grave sites. The president of Russia laid a bouquet of roses and gave a speech. “I don’t even know where my own brother is buried, whom I never saw, never knew,” Putin said. “It is very likely that he is buried here somewhere.” Describing the “horrendous” suffering of Leningraders inflicted by the Nazi siege, Putin declared: “This is what is called a crime against humanity.” > **[Putin's parents survived the siege of Leningrad. Why does he presume an...](https://timothynoah.substack.com/p/putins-parents-survived-the-siege)** > > The same urban siege tactics killed his brother Viktor, nearly killed his mother Maria—and, in the end, failed. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2023, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/4 "2023-05-14T17:04:12Z")
Leningrad was purely a siege though; there was no urban fighting. Finland refused to go past the pre-war border and attack the city from the north, and Hitler specifically forbade any attempt to actually take the city by force, ordering it to be left to starve. Depending on your definition of ‘urban warfare battle,’ the [Siege of Sevastopol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sevastopol_(1941%E2%80%931942)) (yes, that Sevastopol) lasted 8 months and 4 days from 30 October 1941 – 4 July 1942 when the city finally fell to the German 11th Army under von Manstein. This wasn’t constant urban fighting, of course, or even constant ground attacks on Sevastopol’s defenses. During the course of the fighting, the Soviets conducted an amphibious landing at the Kerch peninsula in December 1941 as part of the 1941-42 Winter Counteroffensive which the Germans had to clear out in May 1942 before beginning the final assault on Sevastopol. The 800mm railway gun [Schwerer Gustav](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav) was used in the siege along with numerous smaller super-heavy artillery pieces. The final ground assault on the defenses of Sevastopol didn’t begin until June 7th 1942. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2023, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/5 "2023-05-14T17:23:59Z")
According to Homer the siege of Troy lasted almost ten years. Closer to present times the [Battle for Madrid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Madrid) during the Spanish Civil War lasted two and a half years. From the wikiarticle: > The **siege of Madrid** was a two-and-a-half-year [siege](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege) of the [Republican](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Spanish_Republic)-controlled [Spanish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain) capital city of [Madrid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid) by the [Nationalist armies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalist_faction_(Spanish_Civil_War)), under General [Francisco Franco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco), during the [Spanish Civil War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War) (1936–1939). The city, besieged from October 1936, fell to the Nationalist armies on 28 March 1939. The **Battle of Madrid** in November 1936 saw the most intense fighting in and around the city when the Nationalists made their most determined attempt to take the Republican capital. BTW; this siege is historically the origin of the concept of the “[fifth column](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_column)”, though the story of who said the term first and when is murky. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2023, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/6 "2023-05-15T13:36:16Z")
Class Warfare. Rich vs Poor & Middle Class. Thousands of years. Still ongoing. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2023, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/7 "2023-05-15T14:39:33Z")
**Moderator Note** > [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > Class Warfare. > … While this does use the word “warfare”, these are socio-economic issues and do not really fit the definition of “urban warfare” as given by the example in the OP. If you want to discuss socio-economic issues feel free, but not in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2023, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/8 "2023-05-15T15:09:49Z")
I think the Siege of Sarajevo has got to be in contention. > **[Siege of Sarajevo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sarajevo)** > > Stalemate > Bosnia and Herzegovina(1992–96) Herzeg-Bosnia(1992–96) > Alija Izetbegović  (POW) (April–May 1992) > Hakija Turajlić † > Sefer Halilović > Rasim Delić > Jovan Divjak > Dragan Vikić > Enver Hadžihasanović > Mustafa Hajrulahović > Vahid Karavelić > Nedžad Ajnadžić > Mušan "Caco" Topalović † > Ismet "Ćelo" Bajramović (WIA) > Jusuf "Juka" Prazina > Ramiz Delalić > Zaim Imamović † > Vladimir Šaf > Ivan Vulić ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2023, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/9 "2023-05-15T16:27:00Z")
How long was the fighting in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war? ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2023, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/10 "2023-05-15T16:51:06Z")
According to [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Beirut), it went from June 14 to August 21. So a bit over two months. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2023, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/11 "2023-05-15T17:00:38Z")
I’d generally take urban warfare to mean people fighting in the streets, surrounded by multi-story buildings. My guess would be that most of the fighting in Bakhmut (and Ukraine, in general) has been one of: 1. Outside of the cities, as trench warfare. 2. Long distance siege/artillery warfare with the attackers lobbing long-range missiles into the city. 3. Skirmish warfare, among the rubble of destroyed buildings - turning it, effectively, into terrain more similar to rocky hillsides than urban streets. Since the attack on Kyiv, I’d assume that Russia has largely avoided getting into any significant amount of urban fighting. The defender is in too strong of a position, until you’ve flattened everything. It’s better to reduce it all to rubble before advancing. ---
**Author:** ![NinthAcolyte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ninthacolyte/32/13676_2.png) [@NinthAcolyte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinthAcolyte)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2023, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/12 "2023-05-15T17:14:25Z")
One wonders if there is some sort of intrinsic limit to the duration of an urban combat. For urban combat to be “worthwhile” in a strategic sense, all hostile parties have to see the city (by which I mean the actual physical buildings) as worth preserving. If you don’t actually care about the utility of the city’s construction, you might as well just bomb it or flatten it with artillery and skip the whole “urban combat” part. And then if all hostile parties actually want to _hold and occupy_ the city (or make use of it after fighting ceases,) urban warfare of sufficient duration might very well destroy the city’s buildings to the point where it’s inhabitable anyway. To summarize my ramble: How long can two armies run around a city shooting at eachother and blowing things up before it ceases to be urban combat anymore because the urban environment is destroyed? ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2023, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/13 "2023-05-15T17:20:46Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I’d generally take urban warfare to mean people fighting in the streets, surrounded by multi-story buildings. “(Streetfighting) is a bad misnomer, because the last place you see any sane man is in a street where every yard is usually covered by a well-sited machine gun. It should be called house-to-house fighting, which it literally is.” **–Denis Johnston, BBC Correspondent, [_On the Front Lines,_ John Ellis, pg 90](https://www.amazon.com/Front-Lines-Experience-through-Soldiers/dp/0471551481)** > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Since the attack on Kyiv, I’d assume that Russia has largely avoided getting into any significant amount of urban fighting. The defender is in too strong of a position, until you’ve flattened everything. It’s better to reduce it all to rubble before advancing. Therein lies the problem with urban warfare; pounding buildings into rubble with high explosives doesn’t actually reduce their defensibility. If anything, the rubble is a better defensive position than the buildings were since you can’t collapse the rubble on the heads of the defenders like you could when the rubble was still in building form. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2023, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/14 "2023-05-15T17:25:29Z")
A destroyed city still makes a good defensive position. So the defenders still have incentive to continue the fight, as long as the attackers remain. An attacker can withdraw, but almost never does an attacker enter into urban operations with no intentions beyond “pound it flat” because, as you note, that doesn’t require an active ground engagement. So that withdrawl would come down to “we give up, you can have your rubble.” They would be giving up on the objectives of taking ground and forcing out or capturing their opponents. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2023, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/15 "2023-05-15T17:48:00Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > An attacker can withdraw, but almost never does an attacker enter into urban operations with no intentions beyond “pound it flat” because, as you note, that doesn’t require an active ground engagement. [There was a good scene concerning this in the series Band of Brothers.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7kiibl4bpI) One of the Airborne troops was trying to tell a British tank commander about a German tank hidden up ahead, and how if he just took a shot through this one wall, he’s take the tank out. The Brit said he had orders to avoid any “unnecessary destruction” in the town, so he had to advance until he actually saw the tank before he could shoot it. Of course his tank ends up getting shot first. By that evening, most of the town had ended up as rubble. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2023, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/16 "2023-05-19T19:19:54Z")
Hatfields and the McCoys - around 30 years. [Hatfield McCoy Feud timeline](https://www.herald-dispatch.com/features_entertainment/hatfield-mccoy-feud-timeline/article_98a91d52-8606-5a82-bb19-ed712e4fd81c.html#:~:text=The%20Hatfield%2DMcCoy%20feud%20ran,to%20www.matewan.com.&text=Devil%20Anse%20Hatfield%20forms%20guerrilla,follow%20between%20McCoy's%20and%20Hatfields). ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2023, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/17 "2023-05-19T19:45:03Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > According to [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Beirut), it went from June 14 to August 21. So a bit over two months. That was only one phase of the ongoing Lebanese Civil War. Arguably the city was a war zone for fifteen years: [Green Line (Lebanon) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Line_(Lebanon)) ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2023, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/18 "2023-05-20T05:29:11Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > Hatfields and the McCoys - around 30 years. Not really “urban” by any meaningful sense, though. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2023, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/19 "2023-05-20T06:38:39Z")
The [sieges of Ceuta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieges_of_Ceuta_(1694%E2%80%931727)) lasted 26 years but we are not counting sieges? Does the [Battle of Verdun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun) count? That was a city and the battle lasted 9 months, 3 weeks and 6 days. > The Battle of Verdun, 21 February-15 December 1916, became the longest battle in modern history. - [SOURCE](https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-battle-of-verdun) I’d be shocked if there were longer battles in ancient history (if we do not count sieges). ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2023, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033/20 "2023-05-20T12:13:01Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Does the [Battle of Verdun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun) count? That was a city and the battle lasted 9 months, 3 weeks and 6 days. > > > The Battle of Verdun, 21 February-15 December 1916, became the longest battle in modern history. - [SOURCE](https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-battle-of-verdun) Verdun never reached the city proper; the fighting took place entirely in the Fortified Region of Verdun ( _Région Fortifiée de Verdun_) and the hills north of the city. [![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Battle_of_Verdun_map.png) ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Battle_of_Verdun_map.png) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-longest-urban-warfare-battle/984033.md?page=2)